The Problems with Paul: His Roman Citizenship

As has been mentioned before, this site is very much anti-Paul.  The surviving version of Christianity, which was originally a Jewish sect led by Jesus' brother James, should rightly be called Paulism. Much has been discovered about his influence in the last 50, and especially the last 15, years. The most enlightening sources on the subject are The Mythmaker: Paul and the Invention of Christianity, by Hyam Maccoby; Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity, by James D. Tabor; and James the Brother of Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls, by Robert Eisenman, which is a summary and update of his earlier exhaustive work, James the Brother of Jesus, published 14 years earlier.

As implied in the title, this post focuses on one aspect of the many problems with Paul. While this is no way an apologetic for Judaism or early Jewish Christianity, it's theology being revelatory as well, the self-serving nature of Paul's overhaul of the movement founded by John the Baptizer, Jesus and James, sets Paulism apart as the biggest yet still subterranean sham in history. Could a simple tent-maker from Tarsus have had the obvious pull he displays, even in the wholly unlikely circumstance that a tent-maker became a Pharisee who studied under the storied sage, Gamaliel as Paul's acolyte, the author of Luke, has Paul claiming in Acts (22:3). Would a Pharisee be a thug enforcer, persecuting the Jewish Christians (likely responsible for the death of Stephen and possibly James) who had been defended by Gamaliel (Acts 5:34-39), at the bidding of the Roman appointed high priest? No, but a Herodian with Roman citizenship would certainly fit.

It has been my previous position that Paul was not a Roman citizen by birth as he claimed, but likely purchased it from funds skimmed from what he'd collected to bring to Jerusalem. The main reason to believe it was Acts (22:25), which has Paul revealing his Roman citizenship in order to avoid a flogging. Yet on previous occasions he claims he was whipped five times, beaten with rods three times (a Roman punishment), stoned once but never sought refuge in his citizenship (II Cor 11:24-25). Incredibly, on another occasion (Acts 16: 22/37-38), he was beaten by Roman authorities, yet doesn't reveal his citizenship until afterwards!

All this smacks heavily of fabrication, and poorly done at that, which means it is more likely that Paul was indeed born a Roman citizen. But Jews with Roman citizenship were almost unheard of, making the part about the authorities' surprise at his citizenship genuine. However, there was one group of quasi-Jews who did have Roman citizenship which had be awarded to "the offspring of Antipater and his son Herod for conspicuous service to Rome", namely, assisting in the Roman conquest of Palestine. Eisenman, using several sources in his book (above), especially the historian who was Paul's contemporary, Josephus, shows that Paul almost certainly was such a Herodian (p. 189-193).

But Acts, probably written no earlier than 80 CE and possibly even into the second century, was bent on emphasizing Paul's Roman citizenship as a selling point to it's gentile audience; while Paul himself, working with gentiles and Jews in Asia Minor in the 40s & 50s would have been reluctant to proclaim that citizenship himself, wanting to exploit his Jewish connection while knowing, before the fall of Jerusalem, the prevelance of hatred by Jews for the Roman occupation of Palestine. In fact, he never mentions his Roman citizenship in any of his own writings.

In Paul's own words (Rom. 16:10-11), he sends greetings to the house of Aristobulus (King of Lesser Armenia and son of Herod of Calacis), and to "Herodion, my kinsman". Salome, the one who danced for the head of John the Baptist, was the wife of Aristobulus and was Herodion's mother.

Afterlife?

The idea of an afterlife in Abrahamic religions does not go back as far in history as popularly supposed.  The first indication of a belief in the idea occurs in 2 Maccabees, about the revolt against the Seleucid King Antiochus Epiphanes, who conquered Jerusalem in 167 BCE and proceeded to start killing all Jews who wouldn't stop practicing their religion and participate in his Hellenistic, pagan religion.  The revolt against his reign was led by Judas Maccabeus who ousted the Seleucids from Jerusalem and the Temple in 164 BCE, (which is still celebrated by Jews as the Festival of Chanukah).

The pertinent passage, 2 Maccabees 7:9 (written c. 124 BCE), concerns a woman who is forced to watch as her 7 sons are tortured and killed for refusing to eat pork.  Before she is martyred herself, she says, "the King of the universe will rise us up to an everlasting renewal of life, because we have died for his laws".  That idea expressed here comes well after the codification of Judaic canon.

By the time of Jesus, the Pharisees and Essenes generally believed in an afterlife, but the Sadducees, the priestly class and Roman collaborators, did not.  The above Maccabean passage sheds some light on why that was likely the case.  People who believed in a reward in the afterlife would be more likely to risk revolt even to death.  Add to that fact that revolt against Antiochus was still relatively fresh in the minds of Jews in Jesus' time, prompting them to be looking for a Maccabean like leader/messiah to oust the Romans and their lackey priesthood and royalty.  Jesus, as the Son of David with his Kingdom of Heaven drew on those powerful associations.

The attitude prior to the hope and belief expressed by the woman in the passage above, is best put by Job's question, "Can the dead live again?"--Job 14:14  Job was written/compiled probably no later than 200 years before 2 Maccabees.

Certainly the exposure of Judaism to the wide cosmopolitan array of religions and cults that accompanied the Roman conquest, had a growing influence on a belief in an afterlife.  The cults of Isis, Dionysus and Mithras, with their resurrected savior-man-gods, communion like rituals and everlasting life (not to mention the sexual exploitation) were tempting even for Jews, particularly outside of Judea.  Paul almost certainly buckled to the pressure to co-opt the popular aspect of these cults and their associated mystery religions.  It makes one wonder if the possibilities of such modification to the Jesus movement wasn't the actual substance of his epiphany on the road to Damascus.

Is there an answer to the possibility of an afterlife?  From the perspective of this blog, assuming a laissez faire God, no--at least not a divinely revealed one.  But reference my article,  The Ethernatural, for a credible suggestion concerning the possible basis for a theory of an afterlife.